Tag Archives: music

Hazel Green, Alabama — McCafe

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Personal note: my wife attends an event at our niece’s house presumably about clothes or jewelry. Meanwhile, I sit in a McDonald’s restaurant, looking at dead flies on window sills and listening to an old man tell his family, “I am NOT moving back to Alabama. You cannot have my car. These are my keys.” while he charges his cell phone that he hooked up to a power receptacle hidden high above an insect zapper he unplugged.

What is the definition of crazy?

Is it the kid using a metal stake to compress the garbage so he doesn’t have to empty the rubbish bin for a while, his McDonald’s uniform askew, his tie hanging loose?

Is it the woman leaning against the wall outside one of the entrances, smoking a cigarette and chatting on her mobile phone in the afternoon August heat?

What about the people speeding by on the highway?

Or me, drinking an iced coffee after eating a dipcone (soft serve ice cream served in a cake cone and dipped into chocolate)?

What about the way Ballmer ran Microsoft into oblivion? Or the way Bill Gates is trying to make up for years of predatory business practices by attaching his name to the reinvention of the toilet?

I could be making notes about comets or Martian rovers.

I could make a list of people to thank.

Instead, I type on a mobile Bluetooth keyboard for iPad, reinventing myself, reiterating the importance of computer connectedness and listening to a family discuss a boy’s future school performance because his father (grandfather?) has issues about moving back to Alabama to care for his wife (daughter?) and [grand]child.

Nearby, the Tillman D. Hill Public Library.

Closer, a live housefly on the tabletop looking for food.

Across the way, a computer for people to request a job at McDonald’s: “Apply Here / Aplique Aqui — This Employer Participates in E-Verify”.

And I have 45 more minutes to entertain myself until I drive back to my niece’s house to pick up my wife.

These are the salad days, the good ol’ days, the golden years, the midlife crisis years…watching a young family load their kids in the Chevy Silverado truck after having loads of fun in Playland, the father wearing a set of girl’s necklace beads because his little baby is about to fall asleep in his arms, the mother loading the other daughter in the backseat.

We live and then we die.

She drives the truck. He drives the Pontiac Trans Am.

One of their children does not look like it belongs to them but they seem to love each other.

An older couple, he wearing an “Anderson’s Dozer Works” blue work shirt, she using a cane, hobble to their Buick Roadmaster in the handicapped spot.

The days of our lives tucked in between birth and death, not far from the border between Tennessee and Alabama, longtime college football rivals.

What more can we ask for? What more do we want, able to drive and talk on the mobile phone at the same time, arguing in one moment and laughing together in the next?

“I’ll put your face all over facebook, MySpace, Google, the whole Web, if that’ll make you feel better!” The old man laughs and his family joins him. “Of course, I don’t have Internet at home.” They laugh some more. “I’ll sue everybody that makes fun of you who could have seen you if I had Internet at home.” They continue laughing, one of them saying, “Well, you’re on the Internet now. Quick! Send someone an email!” They giggle. He guffaws, “I swear, I’m gonna put it on facebook!” The boy states, “They’re gonna call me names,” and storms off to the bathroom. The man: “I’m gonna pull it up on Yahoo!” The woman snickers. “New email!” he declares as she stands up to look. “See!” She leans over and breaks into a broad grin. “See, I’ve posted pictures of last Thanksgiving. What’s there to make fun of?” The boy returns and rolls his eyes: “That!!! You can’t put those on there!” nodding at me as he leaves the restaurant to get in his Lincoln LS sedan and roll down the windows, playing country music loud enough for me to hear.

They calm down. No more arguments about returning to Alabama. A family makes up in a fast food restaurant, at least for the moment.

The man raises his voice, over the protest of the woman questioning what he’s posting next. “By God I do, NOW!!!” She gets ready to go. “See, you can put all sorts of stuff on facebook. Look what he’s put up there on his own. Birthday party. You’ve got to pay attention to what he puts on there. Maybe you should. Maybe you should. Security issues start with facebook and go from there. Anyone can see where you’re going and where you’ve been. See, here’s stuff from when he was 12. Now everybody can see pictures of everybody. Somebody could come in, slap him across the face and another kid take a picture from across the parking lot, posting it for the world to see. What will they think of that?”

She shakes her head. “They won’t do that. I’ll be back.” She walks out to the Lincoln, lights up a cigarette and drives off with the boy, leaving the man to work on his laptop and talk on the cell phone.

Time for me to leave, a little early to pick up my wife, but well within the range of conversation of an adult man and adult woman having a little fun with a teenage boy about pictures of his offline life in perpetuity on the Internet, while learning from each other what’s important in the boy’s online life.

The Stranglers

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Time for this blog to take a diversion.

Faial used the trail of her GPS signal to send a message — today was it.

She spent the rest of her morning following a routine established as a break in a series of messages.

The operator, codenamed Fountain Pen, who gathered information on potential targets received the message and, with the aid of an IT administrator, replaced the message with Faial’s usual GPS signal information for that time of morning on an average workday in a big city.

So much information was gathered that no one was going to pay attention to the change in timestamp for one piece of sand in a world of deserts that the Central Depository represented.

= = = = =

The Committee agreed to send out more decoys and forward scouts to test defense lines of the enemy, an enemy that lived within the walls and secret meeting rooms of the Committee’s inner chambers…as planned.

The enemy was no longer a person, people, place or organisation.

The enemy had long ago become simply information.

Scholars, dilettantes and amateurs argued about the difference between data, knowledge and information, not necessarily in that order.

The Committee didn’t care.  In fact, the name “Committee” was itself simply a placeholder for a network of information gathering and misdisuninformation dispersal.

There were too many people who saw their corporal essence as the end-all, be-all of existence so a group of people were assigned to sit down together both physically and virtually to make a solely symbolic gesture toward the past and call themselves the Committee.

The network didn’t care as long as information fed the network’s need to justify its own existence.

= = = = =

At a reunion concert for a punk band, The Stranglers, a cybernetic organism known as Sir Rah mingled with the crowd.

Sir Rah was a prototype, an amalgamation of electronic and organic parts designed to mimic a drunk/high/stoned party animal whom no one would exactly remember nor question its shortcomings.

Sir Rah’s only duty was to collect skin, sweat, saliva and hormone samples without detection.

The creators of the program that turned a laboratory robot into Sir Rah had originally named their project, fatalistically, Que Sera Sera.

= = = = =

Faial had first heard about The Stranglers in the hallway of an old cotton mill in Huntsville, Alabama, where the Rocket City Jazz Orchestra, in association with the Huntsville Swing Dance Society, sponsored a Sock Hop.

Faial was generally shy, not prone to getting attention, so when she saw the high level of excitement on the faces of the people discussing The Stranglers and one of the band members ’70s broom mustache and long hair, she decided to sneak into the big city and see the band.

= = = = =

The night before the concert, Sir Rah, as programmed, walked into a theatre to view a screening of the film, “The Odd Life of Timothy Green,” written by the son of keystone member of the Mothers of Invention, Frank Zappa, who sported a broom mustache.

= = = = =

Faial, whose mother was of mixed French, German, Norwegian, English, Scottish and Irish heritage and whose father was a testtube baby, exact origins unknown, but said to be a perfect mix of all races and genders, was attracted to men with broom mustaches.

= = = = =

Sir Rah had a few flaws that its creators had not bothered to catalog because their funding had run short after the last political election that turned the general populace against advancements in science.

= = = = =

Faial had bought the latest in self-documentation gear, including necklace, headband, earrings, belt, wrist/ankle bracelets and backpack purse that recorded everything around her, as well as her vital signs like heartbeat/breathing rate and body temperature.

= = = = =

As the early birds found strategic locations to fully enjoy The Stranglers — some with their heads up against giant loudspeakers, some seated in chairs, some up in the rafters, Faial and Sir Rah wandered in, unaware that they both liked to stand in the front row, facing angry-looking bouncers who relished tossing hooligans off the stage and into sections of the throng that weren’t ready for body surfers.

A warmup band, Peter’s Ol’ Toole, an Irish band known for making stadiums full of rebellious youth riotous, offended everybody by naming all the religions they could think of and singing new lyrics to the melody of “I Saw Your God’s Face in My Pile of Stinkin’ Shite.”  Those they hadn’t offended they promised to carve into eentsy-weeny pieces of meat to feed the starving child labourers they kept locked in an unventilated lorry they drove from show to show just so the crowd could hear them screaming when Peter’s Ol Toole sent electric shocks through not only the lorry but several chairs and standing places in tonight’s school gymnasium chosen for this illustrious reunion of a long-forgotten band chosen to follow their magnificent performance.

By this time, Faial and Sir Rah were pressed against each other, joining the misspent youth around them spitting expletives and other joyous words at the band members standing a few feet above them.

The bouncers would occasionally grab a member of the audience, drag him or her over the rail and pummel the person with whatever blunt objects they had in their hands — flashlight, walkie-talkie, billy club, brass knuckles or studded neck collar.

Sir Rah registered each beating as closely as it could get without revealing its purpose.

Faial became fascinated with Sir Rah’s interest in what was going on over the railing so she climbed on a rail to see what would happen.

Within the blink of an eye, Sir Rah lifted Faial onto its shoulders and leaped on stage, stepping on the switch that electrified the whole auditorium because a union steward was upset that his crew didn’t get paid standard wages and wired the whole place to one switch as a joke, daring anyone in Peter’s Ol’ Toole to shock themselves and their drugged-out followers.

The deafening roar of explosions and horrendous smell of burning flesh filled the auditorium and flowed down passageway.

Thinking it was their cue, The Stranglers leapt to their feet as one, burst through the door of their dressing room and ran toward the stage.

They were met by the embodiment of Chaos they had sung about for years.

Bleeding and confused, fan and hater alike fled, knocking over The Stranglers in their haste, those who could stand, limp, walk, drag or run headed toward the exit doors.

Faial and Sir Rah observed the scene around them detachedly.

They were in their element, at the center without being seen, pebbles thrown into a pond watching the ripples they caused spread away from them as they sank to the quiet, still, comforting bottom.

Sir Rah lifted his foot off the switch and set Faial down.

They stared at each other, a switch inside them turning on.

They clasped hands and, stepping over the dead band members, walked off the stage.

= = = =

Back at her flat, Faial shared the recordings of her self-documentation equipment with Sir Rah.

Sir Rah opened up panels to reveal interfaces it could use to download its recordings, including a USB port that mated with Faial’s tablet PC.

While she attached her PC to Sir Rah, Sir Rah’s internal laboratory finished processing the samples it had gathered of violent bouncers, outrageous band members and Faial, the last of which Sir Rah did not know how to process, including  Faial’s lipstick stains on Sir Rah’s lips and Sir Rah’s responding elevated body heat.

Throughout the night and into the next morning, the two of them attempted to make sense of their information.

Meanwhile, Fountain Pen tracked Faial’s GPS signals and misinterpreted her change in routine.

Fountain Pen forwarded his computer’s interpretation of Faial’s GPS signal path from the previous evening and into this morning, when she failed to follow the designated path from flat to croissant cafe to workplace.

The recipient of the encoded message, codenamed Desk Drawer, forwarded the message on to Headquarters.

A clerk at Headquarters, codenamed Melted Wax, still blown away by the literally shocking events of the previous night’s concert, having not even seen the retro band he cherished from his days as a headbanger, had, ironically enough, a headache.

Melted Wax looked at the message and decided it was a tactical error by a secret group known only as the Committee.

“Chief.”

“Yes, Melted Wax?”

“I have a message from the Desk Drawer that came straight from the Fountain Pen.”

“Look, I’m not interested in another one of your crazy drawings.  My daughter hasn’t returned from spending the night at her friend’s house and I can’t get anyone to answer the phone there.”

“No, ma’am.  It’s a message from ‘Desk Drawer’!”

“Why didn’t you say so?”

“Well, I thought I did.  Anyway, I think we have the Committee caught redhanded this time.”

“Redhanded?!  You mean you have proof that rumours tying Bill Clinton to the Communist Russian regime are true?  Is Hillary secretly planning to turn the U.S. over to Putin?”

“No, ma’am.  For your sake, I’m afraid not.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

“According to this message, the child of one of our testtube babies is a core member of the Committee and appears to be tied to the terrorist attack on that rock concert last night.”

“Terrorist attack?  Rock concert?  What was the name of that band?”

“‘The Stranglers,’ ma’am.”

“Ahh…I’m beginning to see a pattern here!”

“You mean you already know about this message?”

“Yes, Melted Wax.  My daughter said she was going to a friend’s house to watch a movie called ‘The Stranglers.’  Now I bet she, her friend and her friend’s hippie parents all went to see that band.  Serves them right it was a terrorist attack they walked into…Communist pinkos like the rest of ’em…”

“But, ma’am, that’s your daughter you’re talking about!”

“Melted Wax, do you have any children?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Then you don’t understand the feeling that some of us want to be a Daddy Grizzly and eat our young who have not lived up to our standards.  Never mind.  Where’s the Committee member you’re talking about?”

“Last location was a flat in downtown.”

“Keep an eye on that testtube baby’s baby.  We may have use for it, yet.”

“Yes, ma’am.”  Melted Wax wrote down a new codename, TBabyBabe, and sealed the file.

If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands…

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If you are a salmon swimming upstream, a grizzly bear tries to take a bite out of you, you slip out of its mouth and die before spawning, would you think your life had any meaning as your body parts decompose and feed multiple non-bear lifecycles?

What about the soldier who committed suicide before reproducing himself?

Or the young girl ridiculed at school who steps in front of a subway train?

Or the farmer who died of a heart attack in the field with ten children to feed?

What about a planet full of fossils but no living beings at this time?

In other words, do we have to give meaning to or put everything in context with our current civilisation?

I have added seven more books to my collection, books which belonged to my father and my great-uncle:

  • The Armored Forces of the United States Army, (c) MCMXLIII by Rand McNally, foreword by Brigadier General David G. Barr, General Staff Corps
  • The Coast Artillery Corps of the United States Army, (c) MCMXLIII by Rand McNally, foreword by Major General J. A. Green, President, U.S. Coast Artillery Association
  • Recruit Handbook, published and distributed for recruits at the Naval Training Center, San Diego, California, 1941 (?), owned by G.T. Green 567-70-46, a word of welcome by R. S. Haggart, Commodore, U.S. Navy Center Commander
  • Mathematics, Volume 1, Basic Navy Training Courses, NAVPERS 10069-A, published by United States Government Printing Office: 1951, owned by Porter (rank unknown)
  • Watch Officer’s Guide, by Captain Russell Willson, United States Navy, published by United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland, 1941
  • Same as above, formerly owned by Ensign Paul F. Glynn, given to my father
  • The Bluejackets’ Manual, United States Navy, 1940, Tenth Edition, published by United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland, 1940

Everywhere I turn in research of my father’s material, I find war memorabilia.

My father never let WWII out of his thoughts.  Further, his Army service during the Cold War gave him fluency in the German language as well as a group of lifelong friends.

My father read spy novels and enjoyed watching John Wayne movies, which reminded him of his youth, going to the theatre on Saturday to watch serialised cowboy movies.

Soon, I will run out of Dad’s material to rummage through.

Then, I will have my mother to spend more time with.

I will not worry about dangling modifiers or prepositional phrases that my father, a professor of 20+ years, taught me to pay attention to.

Days spent with my father are as gone as living beings that became fossils on another planet, with no one to tell their tale.

I only have this moment to call my own.

My nieces and nephews will have a few memories of their uncle that became part of their narratives they pass on now and in the future.

Every day, I gain a bit of wisdom, creating an insight from my observations.

What have I gained from today?

My grandfather and his brother in-law (my great-uncle) both served in the U.S. Navy during WWII — the former remaining a career sailor, the latter returning to civilian life as a U.S. Postal Inspector.

My father, a youth at that time, had plenty of heroes to call his own — war heroes, film heroes — because he was, in part, making up for the lack of his biological father.

In my youth, who were my heroes?  Richard Nixon and his staff, my father, my Scout leaders, some of my teachers, actors who played James Bond, Euell Gibbons, Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Rodale, Red Skelton, and others.

I didn’t have any war heroes.  The Vietnam War was not the type of engagement that the mass media used to create heroes for kids.  We learned about heroes of other wars like George Washington, Sergeant York and General Patton.  We watched protest marches and heard about European terrorist groups like the Red Brigade and American criminals like the Symbionese Liberation Army.

The battle for my set of thoughts was fought not in terms of Axis vs. Allies but cocaine-filled discotheques fueled by bands like the Bee Gees and Donna Summer vs. Boy Scout campfire songs and summer church camp singalongs.

The clash of subcultures continues unabated.

In 1,000 years, the fossilised remains of today’s subcultures will be studied for the minute traces of continuity between one time period and another.  Genealogical institutes will try to connect heroes of the past to common people wanting a feeling of blood-related significance.

The cycles go on and on.

What kinds of songs are we teaching our children?  Singalong songs that were the pop culture tunes of their day or modern songs that reflect the tastes of today?

More importantly, are we creating heroes that our children will continue to admire in their senior years, long after we’re gone?

Do we have to have heroes to give meaning to our lives?

Do we have to have children to leave a legacy and/or do we have to leave a legacy at all, knowing we’re always part of the multiple lifecycles of the universe?

Confused about politics…

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Okay, so I was driving down the road when a news flash interrupted my meditative music.

Apparently, Public Radio International has claimed the top spot in the Mexican government, led by Enrique Pena Nieto.

As you can see, I’m confused.  Public Radio International, or PRI, is, according to wikipedia:

a Minneapolis-based American public radio organization, with locations in Boston, New York, London and Beijing. PRI’s tagline is “Hear a different voice.” PRI is a major public media content creator and also distributes programs from many sources, competing with National Public Radio and American Public Media to provide programming to public radio stations.[1] Additionally, the company is increasingly focused on fulfilling the unmet needs in global news and cultural perspectives, created and curated specifically for relevance for Americans.[2]Therefore its competitive set in the larger media and information landscape consists of organizations focused on creating, partnering and providing global news and cultural perspectives content.

PRI is the “managing partner” of American Public Radio, which provides satellite radio programing via Sirius XM Satellite Radio. APR is composed of PRI, Chicago Public Radio, WGBH (FM) in Boston, and WNYC in New York City.[3]

Am I to understand that the Mexican government is now in direction competition with Carlos Slim’s media empire?

What does that say about the drug cartels?

Who, at the end of the day, will rule the streets?

Will kids listen to the likes of Ahmad Jamal, Hey Rim Jeon, or Yomo Toro?  Does that mean the pop days are just about over for the dynamic duo, Justin Bieber and Paul McCartney?  Will Dolly Parton release an album inspired by the Tijuana Brass?

Do Australians celebrate Christmas in July?

Can someone give those idle folks in Mali something to do besides tearing down burial sites?  Don’t they have jobs or some other useful constructive occupation?

Will Microsoft copyright the phrase “Higgs boson” before it’s too late and the phrase becomes a common household name like “collaterized mortgage obligations” or “six degrees of freedom”, depriving the corporation of calling itself “The House that God’s Particle Built!”?

Five Minutes Until Closing Time

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The situation is this: what do you want after the crisis in Syria is less violent in chaotic parts of that geopolitical zone?  How do you want the people suffering the worst economic conditions in the Eurozone to react?  If you don’t have to pay your medical bills, who’s going to determine if you got your money’s worth?

Tuned in to Pandora radio, picked the Soundgarden station and an advert for “Meet Singles in Your Area” popped up.  Switched to the Claire Lynch station and an advert for “Viagra” popped up.  Stayed up when Alison Kraus started playing.  Very punny.

Anyway, so we’ve got supply lines to regional energy sources which we want to stay open.

We’ve got people in the Middle East who claim that civilisation originated there.

We have people in China trying to prove the same thing.

Thing is, does it matter?

What is civilisation?  Violent suppression?  Censorship?  Surveillance?

And that’s just in the UK.

When is a revolution acceptable?

Who gets to choose when to participate in an uprising?

Is every wealthy person an “alpha?”

Is every person in a position of authority — in charge of military forces, that is — an “alpha” or a “beta?”

[Cue references to “Brave New World”]

What does it mean to be an American or a world citizen?

Can you claim membership in both groups?

I’m blending in with my surroundings, the chameleon nearly invisible, a reflection of the intersecting waves of social [in]justice, letting words, images, labels and such flow through and around me.

Some call it happiness.

I call it being me/not-me.

On Canada Day, I consider a visit to the country via Alaska, wondering if I should move to the land of depleting boreal forests, oil shale field fracking and old gold rushes.

I trust our species to use as much fossil fuel as is in-the-slightest-bit feasible to extract because alternative energy sources are expensive in comparison to…well, pick your chart, select your argument and present to a skeptical public the why’s and wherefore’s of the social/economic/ecological cost of running a modern-day civilisation.

Meanwhile, I’m slapping some money down on a trip to the land of Molson, moose and moist towelettes.

Trekking over tourist traps and snow country.

Working my network of associates and colleagues.

Wondering if monsters sleep under rusted truck cabs in desert conditions near tundras.

Or was that a deserted Tundra truck under seeping monster cabs in rusty conditions?

Maybe ol’ Dusty Rhodes’ll be singing a sad song on the way to the next WWE Hall of Fame induction.

Time for another hand-drawn animated satirical cartoon disguised as what?  The last time, a horror novel.  The next time…?

Stay tuned!

Alone on this lonesome highway, the Wandering Wonderer meditates on the universe that revolves around him solely for his lifetime entertainment, the illusions enjoyable, if tragic or funny in forgotten moments of timeless navelgazing.

This is my dream, my illusion — getting our states of energy, our living, breath bodies in one form or another, out into the solar system, not just our electronic, robotic companions escaping the heliosphere — carrying on the work of our species for millennia, using stories, humour and Earth’s resources to make my [adopted] dream a reality worth living for.

Everything else is just a game in your dreams and illusions.  I’ll play your games sometimes but I promise I soon get bored.  If the alphas and betas want to fight each other to the death, go for it — don’t let me stop your madness, battling over the same ground your ancestors wasted their time killing each other to claim again for the very first time.  If those kinds of games of yours are all there is to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, then end mine here.

No?  I’m still alive?  Good!  Time to explore new fields where resources and repurposed technology may make my dream come true…

Another secret revealed

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In the arena where this blog-in-reality meets reality-outside-of-this-blog, we watch the words reveal the past and the future through your present reading.

Turn on the Suite No. 2 for Orchestra, Op. 64, from Romeo and Juliet, by Sergey Prokofiev.

Or the Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major by J.S. Bach.

Then, sit back and watch this video…

Before you see the video, I’ll ask you a question.

What is your password, any password?

You see, Rick left the room a few minutes ago and I noticed a Bible askew on the bookshelf nearest the computer terminal.

I thought for a few seconds what he would be doing and then it hit me.

An old world globe on top of the bookshelf fell on my head!

After I replaced the globe, I thought about why the Bible would have moved on its own.

Then I logged onto this network; that is, Itried to log on.

Then it hit me.

The cat perched on the headrest of the chair gave me a whack across the forehead, begging for food.

After I fed the cat, I figured out why Rick had moved the Bible.

He had created a new password for the network.

And what’s one of the best known phrases, or verses, in the Bible?

I typed J3164GSLTW and logged back in.

C’mon, Rick?  John 3:16?  That’s the most difficult password you could come up with, “For God so loved the world…”?

Dude, you’ve got to make it harder than that.  I guess “Jesus wept” was too short, wasn’t it?  I’m sure Genesis 1:1 would have been too easy for me to figure out, wouldn’t it?  I suppose I could have tried the 10 Commandments next.

Oh well, now that I’m back, I wanted to share with you the infographic that summarises the secret code that unlocks the world of Rick’s writing (and thus, mine, the plagiaristic copycat that I am).

Short, but sweet, the secret of storytelling.  Rinse and repeat.

Suite No. 2 for Orchestra, Op. 64 Ter from Romeo and Juliet

Waxing the Caddy

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While our friends in another part of the world — a part-time merchant marine and a being from another planet — sort out where they’re going, let’s take a break, shall we?

A bottle-shaped volume of Founders Dry Hopped Pale Ale (35 IBU’s, 5.4% alc. by vol.) finds its way down my gullet, gulp by gulp.

Young men are completing their requirements for Eagle Scout.

A young woman is completing her winning entry in the Science Fair (Wait!  Don’t tell her that she’s won — the judges haven’t critiqued her entry yet.).

People are poised to tour low Earth orbit or take a trip around the Moon, mere years away.

And an actress gives money to help starving people in the Sudan, yet another celebrity sealing her place in history as a person who’s assisting those “over there somewhere, but not in my backyard.”  Some would call it spreading the gospel, evangelising, or doing one’s duty to serve a mission, share a vision and teach civilised survival skills.

These are mere words.  They are the humble expression of my education, my subcultural training.

In the larger culture, the main channel where innumerable ideas flow past before I can blink an eye, many subcultural practices and beliefs influence my thought patterns.

I return to old thoughts that belong to Rick, the former writer of this blog:

Am I the grasshopper or the ant?  Am I the Eagle Scout who displays behaviours consistent with the moral and ethical teaching of the subculture in which I was nourished, where women were objectified as almost virginal in their demeanor and respected as nonsexual mothers/daughters/sisters, or am I the boy who sneaked peeks at the Playboy magazines hidden in the top of my father’s closet, where women from all walks of life were objectified as sexually desirable in their posed photographic fantasies?

When the genders are equally participating in a fun game of sexually explicit skits on stage, should objectification of any sort sneak into my thoughts?

In that ol’ nature-vs-nurture discussion about the formation of personalities, what are the patterns, the personality archetypes, that lead some people to a life of church-based conformities and others to life without rules that discourage comfortably displaying the body, au naturel, and the actions bodies take to relieve sexual desires?

When two subcultures meet, such as the two described above, how do individuals of different subcultures first greet one another?  What are their ordinary social interaction behaviours in office/school/outdoor environments?

I know I have traveled this path of words before but did I make any conclusive observations?

I have no grand, sweeping statements that try to box all personality types together, forcing them to operate under a set of rules for homogeneous behaviour.

I know better than that.

What can I say?  Tonight, I enjoyed the simple pleasure of watching the performance of local actresses on stage, who sang original songs (accompanied by two male musicians), read original stories, and danced in levels of dress (or undress, if you will).  Forgetting the lyrics once or twice, hitting the occasional note offkey and not on purpose.

Burlesque in the land of cotton and spaceships.

Creativity without question.

The main singer with the stage name of Rosie Profane, sounding like Laurie Anderson at times and looking like a grownup Miley Cyrus, was assisted by Pan Asian Cuisine (Christina Sanderson) and the Lovely Aunt Sofonda Peters (apparently a popular character actress of the Posey Peep Show, exemplified by the warm applause and wolf whistles she received).

Other than the staged reading of the Vagina Monologues (which always makes me want to say the Martian Chronicles, for some reason), I rarely get to read, hear or attend a public event where one is asked to think up a new euphemism for female masturbation such as occurred earlier this evening.

The title of this blog is one such poetic cliché for relieving the former medical condition of hysteria.  Another one shouted out tonight was “freeing the slaves,” a reference with historic meaning here in the Heart of Dixie so soon after Juneteenth but also more generally in terms of feminine empowerment.

At the end of the workweek, I had the choice of listening to a tribute band perform the tracks for the album “Back in Black” by AC/DC, a band I never really cared for in my secondary school days, or seeing Rosie Profane bare her personality, her bosom and her derriere, a performance for which my father’s Playboy magazines prepared me.

Dad never cared for rock-n-roll.

Tonight, Dad, I raised a flask of Bushmills in your name while Rosie Profane-ly declared full freedom of expression by singing a song for a military member serving this great country of ours, where an Eagle Scout can watch a striptease act without an ounce of guilt and later write about it for the [uncensored] world to read.

With mass media outlets around the world reducing their staff, including our local newspaper, the Huntsville Times, blogs like these, as well as other social media formats, become the voice of the people.

As a cartoon caption recently stated, “He’ll keep doing it for free as long as we call him a content provider.”

Here’s your free, friendly mention of a local staged musical performance in a former cotton mill, just short of a full-fledged critical review, courtesy of humble ol’ me.

My choice of euphemism?  Hmm…how about ripening the peach?

Trying Not To Impress Yourself

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My family sorts out the news that the VA medical staff does not believe my father has ALS, bulbar option and, besides, he’s a “wanderer” who likes to roll a wheelchair up and down the hallways because he’s not being intellectually challenged on a constant basis anymore, which the staff is not prepared to handle; therefore, we expect the Mountain Home CLC is not a home for my father for very much longer.

Instead, the medical staff thinks my father’s dementia is related to a virus.

As to the dysphagia/aphasia, I don’t know their actioned thoughts on the matter.

I will work with my family to prepare the next phase of my father’s treated illnesses.

= = = = =

Meanwhile, the Committee is getting antsy, too.  Members have been wandering off on personal agendas and not sticking to the major plan.

Tempus fugit!  Only 13886 days to go.

One of the subcommittees reported to me last night in the middle of a swing dance.

On a side note, it doesn’t seem that many decades ago when those of us who worked in the government contracting business were told to keep our lips sealed because “Boris is listening,” implying that Soviet spies were hanging out in diners and bars, waiting for Americans to let slip secret information.

Now, many Russians are members of the subcommittees, sharing important data back-and-forth, equally, with their American counterparts.

It’s the eastern European, subSaharan African, and rogue Chinese populations that we keep a careful eye and ear upon.

Anyway, my two colleagues from Russia, Natasha and Nina (a chemist and physicist, respectively), showed up at the dance last night to discuss serious business.

It won’t be long now before we launch the next probe.

In that electromechanical space explorer we will secure our latest invention.

For years, alchemists thought the most precious product they could make was gold.

Not anymore.

Soon, water will be more precious than almost anything else.

That’s what Natasha and Nina reported to me last night.  They had perfected the low-energy creation of water using the latest in solar power generation material that reverses the processes of plant transpiration.

Do you know how hard it is to translate a conversation into dance moves?

Especially when you’re pretending to be a newby on the dance floor?

Thank goodness, it was one of the first training sessions that the Committee assembled millennia ago.

I have my childhood trainers to thank for their patience in using my unique dancing skills (or lack thereof) to convert thrashing around to the beats of pop music into codeable semaphore-like communication.

We wanted to celebrate last night but the timing wasn’t right.

Such is the life of the Reluctant Leader.

Always working, working, working, dedicating even his most private meditative moments into coordinating the next moves of our planetary life toward outward expansion.

You’ll be glad to know our efforts to reduce the population growth of our species on this planet are succeeding.

As much as I love all of us here, I need to remove some of our resources for daily living to use in other parts of the solar system, meaning I need to curtail our overzealous grab of raw materials for massive pop culture production and divert them to the Committee’s Special R&D Department for Life Reconfiguration, Deep Space Travel and Celestial Body Settlement, or SRDDLRDSTCBS, for short mnemonic purposes (better known as Sir Double-D Lard Stick Bus).

One day, my successor will take solar system resources for galactic exploration but you’ll find out more when the time is right.

I put many of our youth out of work for “The Man” in order to give you a more important assignment — be courteous to your elders and respect their requests to make our species the first one to say to the other species on this planet that we’re putting this former celestial home behind us.

Quit dawdling out there — let’s get to work and have fun in the process giving our descendants something truly worthwhile to call us their ancestors!!!

Happiness, Amalgamated

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Soon enough, while Mr. Gibbs stomachs colorectal cancer, I return to the imaginary future.

All the time, my father spends his days and nights in unknown cognitive condition.

The EU squanders. Or flounders.

Useful youthful years are spent away from dedication to full employment by/for the global economy.

Whose vision is here for me?

I write here, right here, where goals and victories are created by us for us.

Subcategories of subcutaneous subcultural attributes gain strength in building buildings, gilded, geldings waiting by the bay.

This moment is my future. Was. Will be.

I compete with/against my former dreams.

Listening to the likes of Claire Lynch, Ben Bosco, April Taylor and the Lunabelles; pump/reed organs; piano; mobile phone ringtones in sync with automobile brakes and squeaking steering wheels.

Thanks to Robert, Tracy, Kelly, Jody, Eloise, Rick, and Wendy today at the VA. [Yes, it was windy today, too.]

I write as if the future already happened [it did].

That’s the way it was.

Doesn’t matter who, when or where.

The future has a way of controlling its destiny [in retrospect, of course].

A class of ’82 SCHS graduate behind the counter at DQ.

Leaving the farm at 18 only to return and buy the one next door.

Do you know who’s going to Germany?

Who’s been to Myrtle Beach?

Whose father owned a TR3 and then a Porsche?

Who knows the best SNFs in town?

Does anyone want my father for a guinea pig for ALS/dementia/depression brain enhancement research, getting his professorial input via scribbled one-word responses to start with?

How will we deal with autism/dementia in solar system colonies not equipped for nonessential task assignments?

How far do I stretch my thought set to truly take in all seven billion of us, completely attached to the global economic employment model or not?

Every one of us is a data point in the scheme of turning carbon-based lifeform equivalents back out into the galaxy.

Your future has been plotted and trended.

Time to tell you what you’ll be thinking/doing next.

The reluctant leaders plods on in his clodhoppers…